u/Potential-Brief-8167

Me, my brother, and my dad have this theory that since, across multiple sci-fi fandoms, everyone (even the aliens) speak English, that therefore means that something must have caused them to do that, right? We figured it couldn't have been chance, or a trading language, since they hate each others' guts.

So therefore we theorised that there must have been some sort of Empire, right?

So that means we figured that there was once a mighty 2nd British Empire that ruled many multiverses, that eventually fell and gave way to all these different empires that, despite being bitter enemies, still speak British English simply because it is the common language and had been the common language since time immemorial, all due to a certain 2nd British Empire.

But before you go arguing, just as an FYI, this is all a silly little joke that got out of hand.

So, a few hundred years ago, when we first met the humans, we thought that their 'rules' for warfare were a bit odd. It was stranger when they trusted us so readily, with such grace and support for Galactic cooperation as to even only have a single document to sign on order to join their alliance (It was called the 'geneva event' or something, I can't really remember) and to trust even us with such gusto as to make it painful to look back. We, the scum of the Universe, were trusted with open arms by a race we barely knew.

Anyway, we thought they were weak. So we didn't sign their puny little letter of rules, and eventually declared a surprise war on them when It was advantageous to us. They promptly refused help, which seemed a stupid move to us at the time, but apparently they needed to 'teach us a lesson'. We thought this hilarious, for such a peaceful and tiny kingdom to believe that they may teach us something, when they were the new kid on the block.

On the initial advance,we managed to use the element of surprise to capture a couple systems in a month. We gained this foothold, but never made it much further than this due to an advance to cut off our supply lines, which, surprisingly enough, succeeded. Brushing this off as a mere annoyance, we then tried to expand, but ran out of supplies faster than we thought due to a mishap by our military command, which left the lines firmly in the humans' hands. We then somehow escaped to a somewhat stalemate on what then was the new front line.

Now, not much of this was new, barring the taking of the supply lines and further keeping. That was usually a move made by superpowers like us and the other races that, unlike us, the humans had befriended. But what happened next was something we had not seen before. They dug in, but when we were about to take a planet, they evacuated everyone and burned everything to the ground, leaving only dust.

This tactic led to a line of completely useless star systems on the border between us, which was impossible to get around and the thing which infuriated us to an extent you could never even fathom. Every time we made an assault, we captured one of these planets, there was nothing to support our further taking over of others, which meant we wasted time, resources, and men in order to get absolutely nothing.

To add to this, it later turned out that the humans had the tech in order to make these planets worth something again, and would often do so, even on planets which were originally from us. Yes, that's another thing. They were constantly advancing, taking chunks off our once-proud empire like it was oh-so-easy.

It became something of a front-page news story, that the once-thought harmless humans had our high council panicking like buffoons about what to do about their advance onto our capital. And ooh yes, they committed atrocities not even thought of, let alone tried.

Eventually, we convinced them to go on a truce. Turned out, they were sick of it (somehow) and wanted a hiatus too.

But then some motherfucker came around and posed the idea of breaking said 30-year hiatus to try and get revenge. When we redeclared war, I was forced to the front line because I was 'so good' with dealing with the humans despite losing hundreds of battles and millions of men to them. The humans replied 'We've seen this one before' before promptly whooping our asses yet again.

They then destroyed our home planet and forced us into a ceasefire, before getting us to sign the very document we laughed at. Apparently they treated it like 'a checklist'. Not funny.